Avoid the Dreaded G Rating

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"I don't know why it's PG. Uh, we're getting in that stupid thing again where it's like, 'Oh, we gotta throw in a swear word or some kind of innuendo,' to be like, you know, 'Oh! We got the PG rating! So, see kids? You know, you don't have to think this is dorky or anything 'cause we have the PG, so we said something adult!'"

Movies may be art and intended by writers and directors to tell stories, but as far as the funders and distributors are concerned, films need to make money and get the biggest possible audience. Achieving this may involve lying about a movie's content, showing all the best parts, or, with family movies, changing the rating.

Perception means a lot – R ratings tend to indicate something for adults (but not always). G ratings often indicate something for kids. In between are PG and PG-13 movies. So with a lot of otherwise perfectly clean, family-friendly movies, the word "damn" or "hell" (or both) might be added to the script, just to drop that dreaded G rating. The phrase "brief mild language" appearing as a content warning is a giveaway. At PG, the movie has a better shot at avoiding the "kid stuff" stigma that keeps teen or adult viewers away.

Adding a little swearing makes the film easy to edit for TV or airplane viewings without it interrupting the story. Sometimes stronger profanity is unnecessarily added, or the characters pay an irrelevant and fleeting visit to a strip club, or scenes are made more violent. Content is sometimes added to get an intentional PG-13 rating, or removed from a potential R-rated movie for the same reason. It's all about trying to get a certain audience to watch the film.

Ironically, the average G-rated film makes more money than the average R-rated film, but maybe only because G-ratings are rarer. In the UK, the practice is sometimes known as "fifteening" since the target was the BBFC 15 rating, though this faded with the advent of the 12 and 12A ratings.

Today in the U.S., it's nearly impossible to get a G rating on any live-action or even All-CGI Cartoon movie without some serious negotiation. It apparently is to reinforce the Animation Age Ghetto; the MPAA is more than happy to rate something as PG for "nothing offensive" because it's live action. Almost no live-action or CG-animated movies make it to theaters with a G rating anymore.

It wasn't always this way. Since 1968, when modern MPAA ratings began, the G rating has shifted and been significantly Flanderized. Originally, "G" ratings were for movies for a "General" audience, not for "Grandmas & Goo-goo-babies." The earliest G-rated films not only included violence, but sometimes even showed blood. Planet of the Apes (1968), released the same year the MPAA ratings started, was rated G, but you saw Charlton Heston's bare butt and violence, and heard "damned dirty ape" and "God damn you all to hell!" A few years later in 1971, Gone with the Wind was re-released with a G rating despite the racism, barely-off-screen sex, open bloodshed, and a sea of dead bodies — not to mention the most famous use of the word "damn" in cinematic history. As late as 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was rated G despite a couple of horrific deaths by Teleporter Accident.

The change happened in the early 1980's, about after complaints from Moral Guardians about movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins and Poltergeist, all of which received PG ratings, and thus were seen by many young children who really shouldn't have. After this, the MPAA introduced the PG-13 rating, so movies that would've been PG under the old standard became PG-13, with the more "mature" G movies now becoming PG. Thus, the demographic for films that remained G became very young.note This happened shortly before VCR's took off. It turned out that the sort of film that could get a G rating after that is the sort that is usually more profitable direct to video.

Later attempts to content-rate other media in the United States used the by-now-obvious shortcomings of the MPAA system as an object lesson. When US television created its ratings in the late 90's, the "G is for Grandma" effect was mentioned specifically, and is almost certainly the motivation for the US TV rating system having both a TV-Y rating and a TV-G rating: TV-Y is "specifically for kids", and TV-G means "nothing offensive." Similarly, the ESRB ratings for video games, needing to account for both content and playability, have both the "E for Everyone" rating and others for younger age groups (some lower-end E10+ games suffer as well, albeit to a lesser extent). Even though the video game industry is no stranger to edginess for marketing's sake, this trope is probably least common in video games. That said, "E for Everyone" changed from its original name, "K-A for Kids to Adults", specifically because games sold better among older gamers when the rating didn't have "kid" in it.

This is NOT about movies that just happen to have a high rating. It is only about when something clearly unnecessary and unneeded is added to bump the rating higher, because without it the rating would be lower than what the company wants. Also note that it's not always certain what caused a movie to get (or not get) a certain rating, as outside of a few guidelines, the MPAA ratings are a black box.

Examples:

In the UK, 15 is the most common rating for any film not specifically marketed as family viewing and (according to the IMDB) the most common rating overall.

This is true, of 100 films around 60% will get 15 and 12A rating, 10% will get 18, 10% will get a U and 20% will get PG. Even the word "cunt" alone doesn't justify an 18, as both Kick-Ass and Shaun of the Dead feature the word and only get a 15 (mentioned by Simon Pegg on the commentary who bemoaned "15 rating horror" and then got one).

American made films do occasionally suffer due to the differences in ratings between the UK and US. Because the US ratings go from 13 to 18, and the UK goes 12 to 15 to 18. While a some R or NC-17 rated films fall naturally into the 15 range, others get cut to force them into it, as it is deemed more profitable than 18. For example, the subway fight between Smith and Neo in The Matrix originally had the headbutts cut out of it in the UK version; however, the uncut version with headbutts intact was passed with a '15' certificate in 2006.

In the UK, the movie Spider-Man has been mis-associated with an overhaul of the BBFC ratings system. A large number of parents thought its 12 rating (legally enforced) was too high, and they wanted their younger children to be able to see it, leading some local councils (who have the the final say on film certificates) to let the film be released as PG or PG-12. This coincided with the introduction of, and pretty much replacement in cinemas by, the 12A rating (still legally restricted to this age, and still labelled as just 12 for video, but adults may bring minors if they feel the film is appropriate). The first film to be rated 12A upon its original release was The Bourne Identity.

Also in the UK, the BBFC for a while offered a Uc rating for home video releases only, which indicated material particularly suitable for young children. It was abandoned in 2009 following reports that any child old enough to have any influence over what they watched was rejecting videos with that rating as obviously boring.

Inversion: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many films that would certainly get a PG or PG-13 today were rated G. (Examples include the gory Hammer Horror film Dracula Has Risen from the Gravenote the very first film to receive an MPAA rating, the first Airport movie, the aforementioned Planet of the Apes (1968), and The Monkees' psychedelic Cult ClassicHead). One of these films, The Andromeda Strain, even carried this content warning on the original poster: "Rated G but may be too intense for younger children." However, since the MPAA rating system had just been created, the G rating didn't have the "kids only" stigma yet; it still meant "for general audiences".

From 1991 to 2004, there existed a law where to make things easier for the BBFC, any relatively tame cinema ads would be rated U, while not all of them were that tame, and any material which would classify the ad as PG or up would instead give the ad a 15 rating. Any ad worthier of a different rating would be submitted as a regular film. This advert for Don't Tell It magazine that depicted a man being shot out of the blue for no reason, for example, earned an 18 rating without ending up in the 'Film Advertisement' category.

A Crimestoppers ad earned both a U-rated release and an 18-rated release, which had teen cursing as opposed to the one which replaces such words with "mucking".

Related, a lot of independent movies seem to believe this. Kid-friendly independent movies are rather rare, causing the perception that a lot of indie flicks are either pretentiouswaffling, homages to grindhouse movies, or overwrought dramas that have all the sex and violence that mainstream movies won't allow.

The original North American licensor for Sgt. Frog, ADV Films, intended on getting the show on a children's network like Nickelodeon. Once FUNimation got the license, it was clear that they had no intent to do so, and tried their best to sell it to a modern anime fan by making sure it at least got a PG rating - while some of the show is almost better for it (episode 18 with Natsumi's bleeped Cluster F-Bomb works better than a Kansai accent for an American audience), sometimes it just feels gratuitous (on one memorable occasion Keroro says "pain in the ass" and the voice actor feels like he's forcing it). This didn't even work in Nova Scotia, where FUNimation's version still got a G rating. This is somewhat justified as the original Sgt. Frog manga was much closer to a PG 13 rating, but the anime was toned down to be more child-friendly. Funimation's take on it might be trying to restore its original age rating to appeal to the manga's more diehard fans.

Inverted by Pokémon: The First Movie: it was rated G despite its strong violence and its disturbing themes and images. Ironically it was given a PG rating in Canada, which is generally more lenient about movie ratings.

Sentai Filmworks definitely want to give the Gintama movie a high rating: the word "fuck" is used three times in the dub, as well as profanities like "shit" and "asshole", along with a few crude sex jokes. The sub (and the actual Gintama show) do not have this kind of language.

Averted by Paprika. The majority of the film is made in a PG or PG-13 matter (and was rated as such in most countries) - even when touching upon adult subject matter it keeps things discreet. There's also not a bit of profanity anywhere in the film - not even a "damn" or "hell". However, the movie got an R rating simply due to the scene where Paprika's soul is removed from Chiba's body, which does show Chisa topless but discreetly covered up by her arm, until Chisa moves a bit and you see (gasp!) her nipple for a second or two.

Fan Fiction

Despite the Sonic X fanfic Don't Keep Your Distance carrying a "T" rating on Fanfiction.Net, there's little non-kid-friendly content to speak of besides a few minor and forced sexual jokes, main character Paint bleeding mildly from injuries in one scene (with little apparent consequence), and a scene where two minor characters are apparently taking some type of unnamed depressant drug together. It's more than likely that this has to do with T ratings inherently attracting more visitors than the more modest "K+".

Inverted and lampshaded in "Ali G, Innit". In one sketch, Ali G explains that he's determined to get an '18' rating, so he says the word 'cunt'. This initially worked, but since it came out the language restrictions have been loosened such that that word can appear in something rated 15. Since this was the only thing that warranted an 18 for Ali G, Innit, it was promptly re-rated 15.

Inversion: the 1971 Elaine May / Walter Matthau film A New Leaf (which May co-wrote and has since disowned) was given a G rating, in spite of the fact that "damn" was used several times, "son of a bitch" twice, and there was a scene of one of Matthau's suitors about to take off her bikini top.

The 1982 movie version of the musical Annie had two crooks say "You goddamned kid" to deliberately avoid being rated G.

The film The Astronaut's Wife got an 18 rating in Ireland and the UK. Y'know why? Johnny Depp says "cunt". Once. There are a few "fucks" too, but there is no major violence or nudity that would warrant an "adults-only" rating otherwise. However, the Irish iTunes Store labels it with a 15 rating, so maybe the IFCO have changed their minds since.

It is amusing sometimes to see the content warning next to a ranking to see how they justify it. For instance, Batman Begins is rated 12 in Britain and contains 'moderate horror and violence'. The Dark Knight was attacked by some for being rated 12 as well, thanks to it seeming more brutal than it is.

The entire opening scene of Be Cool invokes and lampshades this phenomenon. While telling his friend about how stupid the MPAA system is, Chili says to him "Do you know that unless you're willing to use the R rating, you can only say the F-word once? You know what I say? Fuck that." That's the only time the word is uttered throughout the film - which received a solid PG-13.

The Borrowers could have been G if not for one clear use of the word "damned".

Inverted in the case of the 2011 film Bully. The producers wanted a PG-13 rating so the documentary could be shown in schools and so that kids could go see it without requiring a parent present, but due to a single scene with multiple F-bombs it got rated R. This caused a huge uproar and a ton of complaints directed at the MPAA. Eventually they were forced to lower the number of F-bombs in that one scene to get the PG-13 rating.

The 1995 Casper film had some gratuitous language ("Damn", "What the hell?", "Bitch") inserted to give it a PG rating (though the premise of death and reincarnation alone probably would have done it).

The producers of Chariots of Fire felt that an utterance of the word "shit" in its dialogue would keep the film from a G rating.

Beautifully lampshaded in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Brad responds to his dad's offer to take them all to see Pinocchio, "Who wants to see some dumb movie rated G for kids?" CE3K has a lone "Shit!" which was probably inserted for exactly that reason.

Inverted in the case of The Conjuring. James Wan shot the film with a PG-13 rating in mind, and it shows, with very little in the way of profanity (one "shit" and a few "damns"), sexual content (a mild reference or two), and even gore (a couple of bloody scenes, but fairly restrained in comparison to someotherPG-13 ratedhorror). Yet, it was rated R, the official reason being "for sequences of disturbing violence and terror," but one of the film's producers said it was simply too scary for a PG-13. Didn't stop it from becoming a Sleeper Hit.

The shot of Sacha Baron Cohen's penis late in the film seems to have been the only reason why The Dictator was given an R rating as most of the film was clearly shot with a PG-13 in mind. The trailer even appeared with some PG rated films (such as The Three Stooges).

My Dinner with Andre was not submitted to the MPAA at all, perhaps for this reason. There is very little in this movie that would place it past a PG rating, but at the same time it is a very philosophical, cerebral film only suitable for a mature audience.

The film of Jane Austen's Emma added the word "bitch" (describing a female dog) to escape the G rating.

The film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was sneakier; the filmmakers there avoided the G rating by inserting some profanities into the background din of a ballroom scene.

The use of the insult "penis breath" (along with maybe the "Uranus" joke) in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was Spielberg specifically gunning for the PG rating. Ironic, considering the line was removed in the infamously Lighter and Softer re-release (the one best known for the walkie-talkie guns).

In an inversion, a minor controversy erupted over the religious-football movie Facing the Giants receiving a PG rating, as it was rumored that it was the result of the explicit Christian content (though more likely it was the football violence and themes concerning infertility).

Flubber had one instance of "damn" inserted just to earn the film a PG rating. Strangely enough, when the film aired on TheWonderful World Of Disney, it had the word seamlessly removed to bring it back down to TV-G.

The Live-Action Adaptation of Garfield has one use of "damned", several scenes of slapstick, and the use of a shock collar on Odie in order to give the film a PG rating.

The movie Girls Just Want to Have Fun is almost squeaky clean, save for the moment when Drew tricks a lady into letting him touch her breasts.

For much the same reasons as The Queen (i.e., a total lack of appeal to persons under 18 years old), one of the characters in Gosford Park gratuitously uses cluster F bombs on the phone to drive the rating up to an "R".

John Waters thought any chance for Hairspray's success was ruined when it got a PG rating and didn't have time to modify it to target his usual adult audience. Instead, the lighter approach made it a major success, although he has had issues with people mistaking his other movies for family fare without looking at the rating.

The fact that The Happening was M. Night Shyamalan's first R-rated film was a huge marketing point. Despite there being very little gore (plenty of off-camera violence and Gory Discretion Shots here) no sex or nudity, and to memory, two swear words: "pussy" and "bitch".

The sixth Harry Potter film was rated "PG" after the two previous installments had merited "PG-13". In the UK, contrary to the trend seen so far on this page, it retained the same 12/12A rating as the fourth and fifth films. Despite the rating, it was arguably the most violent and frightening of any of the movies up to that point. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was later released in ancillary markets as a PG-13. The Harry Potter series is an interesting case, because its ratings history is very messy. The first two films were still considered candidates for a PG-13 rating, and were rated accordingly in countries like Finland, Austria, New Zealand, Brazil, and Peru. Also, Goblet of Fire, Deathly Hallows Part 1, and Deathly Hallows Part 2 were reportedly all edited to an extent from an R/15 rating, Mike Newell and various other sources citing "some scenes of violence and emotional intensity" as reasons for the films near R classification. Deathly Hallows Part 1 was even briefly and officially labeled as a 15. Prisoner of Azkaban also ended up receiving an M rating in New Zealand and Australia and the equivalent in many other countries.

A racial slur briefly used in the movie of The Help is what mainly gives it a PG-13 rating, but like Stranger Than Fiction, the whole pie scene probably would've put it in between PG and PG-13, so the racial slur was probably added to push it over.

Invictus would probably be PG for sports-related violence and a few curse words. A Precision F-Strike, used by the team captain as motivation, got it a PG-13.

The King's Speech, a biopic about Prince Albert, the Duke of York; later King George VI, and his struggle with stuttering. It was rated R after two scenes that involved a Cluster F-Bomb. Other than that, there's no violence or sexual situations. Without the cluster f-bombs, or any of the other swear words briefly stated, this film could've been rated PG.

The found-footage horror movie Lucky Bastard earned an NC-17 because the plot took place on the set of a porn film. During a Q&A following the film's NYC premiere, co-writer Lukas Kendall recalled how the MPAA offered to suggest cuts to qualify for an R rating - many of which were contextually ridiculous. (One example: a sex scene at the four-minute mark that, despite showing no genitalia, much less penetration, featured "skin on skin contact." An incredulous Kendall retorted "But that's what happens during sex!") By the time the film got to the seven-minute mark, the MPAA notes had grown so long that Kendall and film-making partner Robert Nathan threw up their hands in disgust and accepted the NC-17. They went on to write a stinging indictment of the rating and why it needed to be abolished.

The film adaption of Madeline had Lord Cucuface yelling "Damn!" and one of the girls playing with Helen the cook's bra to bump it to a PG rating.

Woody Allen's 2014 film Magic In The Moonlight is quite mild in content, especially for a Woody Allen film, with only some references to past affairs, occasional mild language and historically accurate racial stereotyping and smoking to worry about. It would have been PG, were it not for a throwaway line in the first few minutes where a character says he might be accused of sodomy.

The Muppets was rated PG for "mild rude humor", which might have gotten it a G had it come out in The '80s.

Gramercy requested Tom Servo say "shit" a couple of times in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie to bump up to a PG-13. Some sexually suggestive and drug-related jokes helped get the rating, as well.

Prom Night (2008) was given a PG-13 rating to attract a younger teen audience, and thus, was almost completely devoid of any and all blood and gore, in contrast to the original Prom Night, which retains its R-rating to this day. In Australia, the remake oddly got the same M (advisory 15+) rating that the original did. The original still carries an M rating as it was last submitted in 1985, which was before the stronger MA 15+ was introduced (1993), which it would most likely earn if it was submitted today.

The Santa Clause achieved a PG through some sprinkled profanities and thinly-veiled jokes about LSD and phone-sex hotlines by Tim Allen. When such dialogue is censored on TV airings in the United States (the phone sex hotline joke was removed entirely as a result of Executive Meddling), it gets a TV-G. Averted by the sequels which all have G-ratings.

Sneakers is not a kids' movie, nor is it exactly "light, family-friendly fare", but it has very little violence and no sex. In order to prevent the movie from getting a G (or even a PG) rating, which would have been disastrous on several levels, the directors added foul language and some references to sexuality to bump it to PG-13, including a Precision F-Strike from none other than Sidney Poitier.

Star Trek: Generations. Commander Data says "Oh shit" as the Enterprise started its dive into a planet's atmosphere so it would avoid a G rating. It ended up rated PG.

In the 2001 director's cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the rating was deliberately pushed up to PG. The new cut is still just barely PG. Paramount ignored this trope entirely with the Blu-Ray of the theatrical version, opting to place a "Not Rated" tag on the packaging. In the UK it was rated U.

According to Hollywood legend, Star Wars: A New Hope came back from the ratings board with a notice that it had fallen squarely between G and PG. The producers requested it be given the PG rating.

Related to this trope, and Rated M for Money, the horror movie parody, Student Bodies, had this scene in the middle of the film, in which an announcer appears and explains, "Ladies and gentlemen, in order to achieve an "R" rating today, a motion picture must contain full frontal nudity, graphic violence, or an explicit reference to the sex act. Since this film has none of those, and since research has proven that R-rated films are by far the most popular with the moviegoing public, the producers of this motion picture have asked me to take this opportunity to say "Fuck you."note As an additional note: Every theatrical movie has to display the trademarked MPAA logo and its assigned Rating at some point during the film. Most choose to show this at the very end after the credits, and a few choose to show it at the very beginning prior to the studio's logo. Student Bodies showed it right after the above announcement in the middle of the film.

The movie of Stuart Little got a PG rating by having the villains occasionally say "damn" or "hell."

The Australian movie Playing Beatie Bow bears the PG label on the DVD cover. The reason? Abigail says "Oh, shit" towards the end. It even feels forced, as otherwise the movie is clean (and based on a YA novel to boot)

Possibly gunning for a PG-13 rather than a PG, the Wachowski's Speed Racer film uses the word "shit" twice, notably by Speed himself in shouting "Get that weak shit off my track!" The film still only got a PG rating.

Sweet 15, an indie movie about a Hispanic girl who is about to celebrate her 15th birthday and her family of illegal immigrants, would be completely clean except for one brief scene near the end; a cop walks up on a homeless kid loitering in an employees-only area and tells him to leave, responding to claims of illiteracy with "Then why don't you just get the hell out of here?". The movie probably wasn't even rated in the first place, making the gratuitous mild language just confusing.

Inversion: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was originally going to have Envy's line "Shut the fuck up, Julie" uncensored, and have Stephen saying "You know how I feel about girls cock-blocking the rock", but if they did have this, it would have landed the movie an R rating (plus, the movie had mentioning of gay sex, an orgasm scene, and one use of "cock" already, so the movie was close to getting an R rating as it was), thus the F-bomb was censored, and Stephen's line was censored by amp feedback.

The live-action Scooby-Doo movie was originally planned to have a PG-13, and be more of a teen-oriented parody relying on humor fit for college students, such as jokes about Shaggy and Scooby Doo being stoners and Velma possibly being a lesbian. However, Warner Bros. felt that in order for a Scooby-Doo film to make money, it must be marketed to kids, and the film was heavily edited down to get a PG. The film is still the tribute/parody it set out to be, just with cleaner humor. On Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network airings, the allegedly cleaner moments were toned down further to make it a G-rating.

The Queen is a dialogue and mood driven character study, and got a PG-13 rating. No sex, no violence. But there's a lone f-word buried in the dialog so deeply it's easy to not even notice. Not that the movie really appeals to anyone under the age of 13. Similarly and for the same reason, it was rated 12 in the UK.

Topsy Turvy would bore kids, but if you want to make it G, all you have to do is cut an optional scene with topless (and fleetingly bottomless) prostitutes. Also, one character uses the word "fucking" which was not in general use as a swear word at the time. He immediately lampshades it by saying "Pardon my Anglo-Saxon."

We Bought a Zoo had three uses of "shit", two uses of "asshole" and one use of "dick" (all by a 7-year old) in order to try and push the movie up to PG-13 for language, as other than grieving over the death of a mom, the movie is pretty clean. However, their efforts did not work and the movie still got a PG.

Were the World Mine is an incredibly clean cut queer interest film (even the simulated sex scenes are done so tastefully as to be perfectly clean). There are a few F-bombs scattered about the film to bump the rating up... Though it ended up being released unrated in the USA.

The video packaging and theatrical reshowings of 2001: A Space Odyssey are now labeled "Unrated", even though it was one of the films originally rated G in 1968. The scenes of Moonwatcher beating the enemy tribe's leader to death, and Frank Poole asphyxiating in space, would certainly give it a PG rating if it were submitted today.

Street Fighter was aiming at PG-13, but its first pass got an R rating due to the violence. After some desperate re-editing, the violence had been scaled so far back that it got a dreaded G, so the filmmakers added a scene where Guile says, "I'm too old for this shit" to nudge it into the sweet spot of PG-13.

In America, the 1997 biopicThe Harmonists gained an R rating purely for some quick shots of nudity. Other than that and some intense scenes, the film otherwise contains no real objectionable content, and sex is neither shown nor discussed.

There was an aborted attempt in the 2000s to get classic Hollywood films like Casablanca re-rated from G or PG to R due to the fact characters are shown smoking in them.

Films — Animation

Subverted with The Last Unicorn. Anyone watching the film these days is shocked to find the film has a G rating.

The sole content descriptor for the movie of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is "brief mild language". This was an attempt to nudge the movie towards an older audience.

While Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker wasn't rated, it's hard to imagine the solitary Precision F-Strike dropped by the main character being put in for any reason but the attitudes behind this trope. Besides one part with the main character's girlfriend in her skivvies, there's not a lot in the way of objectionable content.

Allegedly Titan A.E. was originally given a G rating so the producers, not wanting to offend their target demographic, older kids and teens, added a brief shower scene to bump it up to PG.

Inverted in the case of Rio. Early promotional material said it was rated PG. Fox responded by pushing the film's release back a week (with only three months to release, no less) and edited it down to G by reanimating a pivotal scene. Despite this though iTunes (to this day no less) mistakenly rates the film PG.

Blue Sky Studios actually deserves credit for averting this trope. They were specifically aiming for G's, not only on both Rio films, but also on Horton Hears a Who! and The Peanuts Movie. Except for Rio at first, they've been successful at earning G ratings without their box office performances being threatened.

Despite some nudity, drug use, mild profanity and frightening images and the fact that it is decidedly not a kids' movie, Rock & Rule managed to only get a PG rating when it was first released. While this can be attributed to the PG-13 rating not existing at the time (it was first introduced next year), the real reason why was thanks to the Animation Age Ghetto and the management at MGM changing during its release; the new managers had very little hope in the film.

Shrek was gunning for a PG-13, whatnot with the adult jokes and cursing in the film, but it still got a PG, similar to the NIMH example above.

Paramount originally wanted South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut to be rated PG-13, but Trey Parker and Matt Stone said they wouldn't make it unless it was rated R. In an inversion of this trope, Terrance and Phillip were originally going to sing "Mother Fucker", which got the film an NC-17 rating. To make it rated R, the song was changed to "Uncle Fucker". Trey and Matt said the change made the song funnier. Matt and Trey also said that the ping-pong ball scene was edited too in order to avoid the NC-17 rating. Originally, Winona Ryder actually was shooting ping-pong balls out of her vagina instead of just looking like it until we finished.

The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water: No profanity this time, but some "mild rude humor" such as a scene with a woman in a bikini laying on the beach, SpongeBob accidentally mooning Patrick, a censored curse word, and some trippy, drug-induced sequences (including a direct 2001 reference) seem to have been added for the PG rating.

The infamous line "Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?" from the 1986 The Transformers: The Movie was there to give it a PG rating (and "Open, dammit, open!" may have served that purpose too). This was reportedly in order to force parents to accompany their children to the theater, so they would know which toys to buy. Like Star Wars, this didn't work in the UK, where it got a U rating (though the line is missing from some DVD versions).

The Family Home Entertainment video release of 1986's The Transformers: The Movie included Ultra Magnus's "Open, dammit, open!", but lacked Spike's "Oh shit".

Oddly enough, despite the film including profanity to bump up the ratings, one of the songs in the soundtrack, NRG's "Instruments of Destruction," had some of the lines rerecorded to edit out comparatively mild words - "iron birds of foreplay" was changed to "iron birds of fortune," "violent seduction" to "violent eruption," and most bafflingly "iron tools of torture" to "iron tools of torment." Granted, the first two (particularly the first) could be argued to have been cut because they were of a sexual nature, but torture to torment is just... weird. The band later rerecorded the song again with all the lyrics replaced with a loop of Spike's infamous line, as a protest to the changes they were forced to make.

A good deal of modern Disney films are now getting a PG rating for something that would have gotten a G in the '90s, notably Tangled, Frozen and Big Hero 6.

Moana fits this as well, but to make it squarely in the PG range, a jarring Curse Cut Short, in this case, Moana herself uttering "son of a-" in frustration, is added in.

Inverted with Sausage Party. The movie came close to receiving an NC-17 rating, mainly because of a piece of Lavash's pubic hair being visible at the end of the food orgy. But after his scrotum was digitally shaved, it was reassigned with an R, which is what the filmmakers were aiming for in the first place. This, of course, is saying a lot considering whatdidmake it into the final film unaltered.

Live-Action TV

The tendency of rap music to do something similar was lampshaded in one episode of Bones, where Booth offers to charge a rapper with a crime-that would be dismissed in short order-to increase his record sales, as long as he cooperates.

Parodied on the Saturday Night Live movie trailer parody The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders, a home invasion horror movie as done by Wes Anderson. Despite all the scenes of violence and gore, it's still rated "G".

"Children of the Gods", the pilot episode of Stargate SG-1, has a scene that features a several minutes of full-frontal female nudity. This comes as a shocker to the audience, as another character was previously shown in similar circumstances, but the audience only sees her back above the waist. Apparently, this was done solely to appease Showtime, the network the show originally aired on, because "premium cable channels have to have nudity."

Ratings used for home video releases of TV series in Canada tend to be far more permissive than those used in the US, sometimes to the chagrin of viewers. Girls, Shameless and Outlander are examples of extremely sexually explicit series that air in the US with the TV-MA rating, yet in Canada get only a 14A (and in Quebec a 13) rating. It's not uncommon to even come across TV-MA shows with a PG rating.

Canadian network TV broadcasts often pump up the ratings based upon the time an episode airs. For example, most episodes of Supergirl (2015) and Once Upon a Time, because they tend to air (depending on time zone) around the 9 PM mark carry 14+ (the Canadian equivalent of TV 14) despite these shows usually never including content stronger than PG, with Supergirl in particular promoted as family-friendly.

Video Games

Custom Robo for the Gamecube: aside from some periodic flirting by the resident womanizer character, and some robot-on-robot violence, there is absolutely nothing in the game that warrants a T rating. There IS, however, a massive amount of reading/text involved in the story, and several of the battles can get quite challenging, so presumably it would be frustrating for younger gamers to get through. Custom Robo Arena for the DS, however, only got an E10+ despite similar a setup.

Aside from the occasional radar-dodging innuendo or heavy theme that kids wouldn't understand, the Updated Rereleases of Final FantasiesIthroughVI have almost entirely clean translations. Presumably for reasons pertaining to this trope, these translations also have several (very) occasional PG-level swear words - enough for the ESRB to complain about, but used sparingly enough to market the games towards general audiences.

Basically nothing in Knytt Underground would warrant anything higher than an E rating. It owes its M rating to the entire existence of the character Cilia, whose apparent first - and only - language is Cluster F-Bomb.

Psychonauts features a few tiny uses of red blood (most noticeable example is when you step on the lungfish in Lungfishopolis, who will be laying in a big puddle of blood) and a few awkward usages of "ass," presumably to bump the game up to a T rating. Without them, there's very little in terms of objectionable content in the game to justify a rating higher than an "E" or "E10+", but the themes it deals with are heavy and/or creepy enough that marketing the game to kids wouldn't have really worked. They just needed to add things the ESRB would actually object to.

Inversion: Shadow the Hedgehog was going to get a Teen rating because it was going to have red blood and depict Maria being shot on-screen. This was on top of the Darker and Edgier story, swearing, and gun use, as the game was intended for older fans. The introduction of the E10+ rating gave SEGA an easy out after a backlash to the reveal. The blood color of the alien enemies were changed to green and human enemies merely get incapacitated without bleeding. The game ends the flashback of Maria being shot as soon as we hear the gunshot, the intro cut out a scene where a soldier was shot, and the swearing was cut to down to a load of forced damns.

The Wonderful 101 would've easily gotten an E or E10+ rating if it weren't for Pink, Vijounne, and Immorta's boob/butt/crotch close-ups, a penis innuendo ("Compensating for something, Baby Blue?"), and swearing ("hell" uncensored, and a couple of stronger ones bleeped out). But due to how hard the game is, and due to the mature themes the game deals with, the developers had to add in content that would keep the ESRB from rating it E or E10+.

Appears to be the case with Splatoon, similar to the Disney examples above. The main draw of the game, the multiplayer campaign, consists entirely of two groups of cute squid-people trying to paint more of an area than the other. (The single-player campaign is slightly darker, but still relatively child-friendly.) There is hardly any morally objectionable content beyond the use of cartoony, unrealistic weapons. It was rated E10+ for "Cartoon Violence".

Web Comics

Tailsteak wrote a comic on the stinger to his hypothetical movie; said stinger consists of him in person saying a wall of swear words to boost the movie's rating up from PG to PG-13.

Community

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